Death Toll From Airstrike on Yemen Rebel-run Prison Reaches 87
Rivalries between regional powers entangled in civil war bring myriad accusations, justifications for bloodletting
A Saudi-led coalition attack killed scores of people and wounded dozens more at a prison in northwestern Yemen on Friday night, according to the Doctors Without Borders aid organization.
“There is no way to deny that this was an airstrike; everyone in Saada City heard it,” an unidentified member of the nongovernmental organization, known by its French initials MSF, was quoted as saying late on Saturday.
“I live 1 kilometer from the prison and my house was shaking from the explosions,” the MSF member said.
The Saudi-led Arab coalition engaged in Yemen’s civil war vehemently denied the accusation.
According to early reports, the strike that hit the prison run by Houthi insurgents in Yemen’s rebel-held north killed 80 people, including migrants, women and children. The migrants held there are mostly Africans trying to get to Saudi Arabia.
However, Ahmed Mahat, head of Doctors Without Borders’s mission in Yemen, told AP the strike hit another section of the prison complex and that no migrants were killed, but it left 82 people dead and more than 265 others wounded.
On Sunday, five more bodies were recovered from the rubble, bringing the death toll to 87.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned Friday’s airstrike, saying it knocked out “vital” internet services in the war-torn country.
But he didn’t spare the Houthi rebels from criticism, condemning their January 17 drone attack on Abu Dhabi.
Prof. Mohammad Marandi, head of the American Studies Department at the University of Tehran, told The Media Line the Houthis are fighting on behalf of all Yemenis.
“Ansar Allah is not just the Houthis and the government of Yemen in the capital Sanaa is not just Ansar Allah, it is the will of the people of Yemen and that is why the Saudis have lost the war,” he says.
This week has witnessed a sharp increase in the bloody civil war that began in September 2014.
Last Monday, the Houthi rebels launched multiple drones laden with missiles toward the UAE capital Abu Dhabi more than 900 miles away, in a brazen attack that hit oil facilities and the airport, killing three people and wounding six others.
“The attack on Abu Dhabi is a legitimate response to repeated aggression and repeated crimes against humanity carried out by the United Arab Emirates,” says Marandi.
Giorgio Cafiero, CEO and founder of Gulf State Analytics, a geopolitical risk consultancy based in Washington, told The Media Line, “It was a bold and powerful demonstration of the Iranian-backed rebels’ very real ability to directly threaten the UAE’s homeland security.
“This drone and missile attack against the UAE’s capital was a reminder that Abu Dhabi remains an actor involved in Yemen’s intersecting conflicts,” he continues.
Cafiero says Ansar Allah (“Supporters of God,” the formal name of the Houthi movement) has “proven before the whole world that it will strike the UAE to make the Emiratis pay a price for the conduct of groups operating in Yemen that the Houthis see as Abu Dhabi’s proxies.”
Fahad al-Shelaimi, president of the Middle East Center for Strategic and Political Studies in Kuwait, told The Media Line the attack on Abu Dhabi took place after the Houthis sustained a series of defeats that forced them to withdraw from a swath of territory in the Shabwa and Marib provinces.
“The timing is significant because the Houthis suffered heavy losses as a result of the coalition’s targeting of them.”
The UAE is part of the Saudi-led military coalition that supports Yemen’s internationally recognized government against the Iran-backed Houthis.
While the Houthis have carried out repeated cross-border attacks against Saudi Arabia, the aerial assault on January 17 was the first acknowledged by Abu Dhabi inside its borders and claimed by the Yemeni rebels.
Shelaimi says that targeting a major city in the Gulf is a “dangerous development.”
He believes that the Houthis could not have executed such a “major operation without tacit Iranian approval.”
The Saudi-led Sunni Arab coalition and its allies, including the United States, regularly accuse Iran of providing military support to the Houthis, allegations that Tehran denies.
“The Iranians support the rights and will of the people of Yemen,” says Marandi.
Sami Hamdi, editor-in-chief at The International Interest, a geopolitical risk consulting firm based in London, told The Media Line that the Emirates has sought to avoid any direct confrontation with the Houthis.
“The more important point is that it reveals concerns on the part of the Houthis that UAE involvement is threatening the Houthi military front at a time in which the Houthis want to take the resource-rich Marib [Province] and continue expanding in order to strengthen their hand at any negotiating table,” Hamdi says.
Unlike Riyadh, Abu Dhabi isn’t battling the Houthis head-on. Rather it is supporting their separatist allies in the south of Yemen, who are now targeting the Houthis.
Hamdi says the UAE’s objective of fostering a division of Yemen between North and South remains unchanged, but he adds that Abu Dhabi has more than that in mind.
“The potential impact has to do with the pace of commencing negotiations. The UAE needs a negotiation process to split Yemen. The Houthis have been dragging their heels on negotiations as they continue to be encouraged by their military gains and international focus on Saudi actions,” he says.
The January 17 assault struck the heart of the Gulf state, threatening to shatter years of meticulous construction of its image as an “oasis of peace and security” promising big businesses a safe and stable environment. All that hangs on the balance if attacks like this continue to target the Emirates.
“The drones and missiles which hit Abu Dhabi did some damage to the UAE’s reputation as an extremely stable country in the Gulf,” says Cafiero.
Hamdi adds, “The impact is primarily economic. The Houthis are unlikely to cause immense damage to the UAE. However, the image of the UAE under attack will undermine perceptions that it is a safe haven. Tourists will reconsider their holidays while companies will be considering to what extent this is a long-term phenomenon.”
Shelaimi asserts that the Houthis’ daring attacks send a message to all Gulf countries.
“The Gulf countries are not safe from Houthi attacks, and I think that Iran is adopting this approach and wants to blackmail the Gulf countries through the Houthi terrorist rebels,” he says.
And in yet another sign that there is no end in sight to the violence, the US Navy said on Sunday that it stopped a “stateless” ship loaded with 40 tons of a fertilizer that can be used to make explosives. The ship was traveling on a route that has been used to traffic weapons from Iran to the Houthi rebels in Yemen, according to the US 5th Fleet based in Bahrain.
The tensions in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest county, have reached tiny Lebanon, mainly via the powerful Shiite movement Hizbullah, which is also backed by Saudi archrival Iran.
Shelaimi says Tehran wants to send a “warning message” to the West in conjunction with the Vienna talks that the Gulf will not be safe if the Islamic Republic doesn’t get a “satisfactory” nuclear deal. This is an “attempt to pressure the West.”
Marandi insists there is no connection between the deadly attack on Abu Dhabi and the nuclear diplomacy underway in the Austrian capital.
“It has nothing to do with the negotiation in Vienna. The negotiations in Vienna are between … the P4+1 [China, France, Germany, Russia and the UK plus Iran], while the Americans are on the sidelines, and the [they] have to do with the Iran nuclear program, and the US and EU sanctions.”
However, Marandi explains, “The continued attacks and the ongoing genocide in Yemen have been a major problem for the whole region and they have prevented improved relations between Iran and those countries [in the Gulf].”
Hamdi doesn’t think that last week’s assault on Abu Dhabi will harm Tehran’s relations with Abu Dhabi.
“No. Iran and the UAE have good ties and are close trading partners. The UAE has also steered clear of Iranian interests for some time in Yemen, Syria and Iraq.”
The seven-year war in Yemen has left thousands killed and wounded, while pushing millions of people there to the brink of famine, according to the UN, which calls it the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe.
